Louisiana Legislative session ends in frenzied votes, anger: 'You set out to cause havoc'

Gov. John Bel Edwards and Senate President Page Cortez triumphed on the biggest issue of the legislative session this year by allocating more than $1.5 billion to state construction projects, over the opposition of far-right conservatives in the House.

But conservatives prevailed on culture-war issues as they passed bills targeting the freedoms of gay people and transgender youth, over the protests of social liberals. Edwards, however, said he would veto those bills.

The fiscal conservatives won a last-minute $100 million reduction to the Louisiana Department of Health — another move that Edwards afterward vowed to counter.

They also forced Edwards and Cortez to use hundreds of millions of dollars more than the two had planned to pay down the state’s retirement debt, and they secured approval to issue stipends — not permanent raises, as Edwards and Cortez wanted — to school employees.

Lawmakers were still sorting out the budget’s particulars after the 60-day session ended Thursday evening because they passed the spending bills in a flurry of chaotic activity just before the 6 p.m. adjournment.

In the final minutes, fiscal conservatives yelled at Speaker Clay Schexnayder in the House chamber while he was ramming through the measures. Across the State Capitol, senators said they didn’t know just what they were voting on.

At one point, House and Senate leaders privately traded profanities on the Senate rostrum over the infrastructure spending bill because an important road project for a senator had been left out. Both sides calmed down long enough to agree to pass that measure, with five minutes to spare.

Afterward, Edwards expressed dismay at the last-minute legislating. A series of tweets hours later between two House Republicans laid bare the behind-the-scenes fight between Schexnayder and his allies on one side and the fiscal conservatives on the other over who was to blame for the finale fiasco.

“To say this day was an embarrassment for our state is an understatement,” tweeted Rep. Larry Frieman, a fiscal conservative from Abita Springs. “Basically the Speaker used the Nancy Pelosi approach of you have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

Rep. Tanner Magee, a Schexnayder ally from Houma, responded to Frieman several hours later: “You set out to cause havoc, caused havoc, and are now upset about the havoc you caused.”

Up against the clock

When the House and Senate began the day Thursday, they had resolved disputes over LGBTQ+ issues that ate up much of the political oxygen during the session.

The Senate had voted a week earlier to revive a hotly debated ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors. The Legislature gave final approval on Monday to that bill and a pair of other anti-LGBTQ+ measures — one dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay'' bill by critics, and another to limit use of alternate pronouns in schools. At that point, lawmakers were signaling that budget talks were ahead of schedule and might wrap up a full day ahead of the Thursday evening deadline.

As they convened Thursday morning, though, legislators still had to pass the $45 billion annual operating budget (House Bill 1), the $11 billion multi-year construction budget (House Bill 2) and a third budget bill that contained, among other things, tens of millions of dollars for pet projects in legislators’ districts (House Bill 560).

The House and Senate had passed different versions of those three measures in preceding days, and a small team of negotiators had hashed out those differences behind closed doors.

But by noon, the three bills weren’t ready to be voted on by the two chambers, because legislative staffers hadn’t had time to make the hundreds of final changes.

Lawmakers’ approval of the budget bills was behind schedule because of differences over a related issue involving an obscure legislative rule that had ground the process to a crawl in preceding days. The strong local economy had pumped so much money into the state treasury that, to spend it all, lawmakers had to vote to overrule a cap on just how much they could spend this year.

All along, Edwards and Cortez favored breaching the spending cap to invest an additional $1.5 billion of the state's largesse in better roads, ports, bridges and in coastal restoration. But a group of fiscal conservatives opposed spending above the limit and wanted instead to use the surplus money to pay down retirement debt for teachers and state employees.

The fiscal conservatives could block Edwards and Cortez if at least 36 of them held together to prevent at least 70 members in the 105-member House — a two-thirds majority — from voting to breach the limit.

But the power of the governor and Cortez, backed by the entire Senate — and local groups clamoring for the spending — proved to be too great. The House agreed to bust the limit; only 19 members held the line.

But the fiscal conservatives’ delay tactics pushed that vote to Wednesday, the session’s penultimate day. This meant that lawmakers couldn’t vote on the budget bills until their final day in Baton Rouge. This was not unusual, but the sheer amount of information that they and their staffs still had to digest would pose a major problem.

Legislators spent most of Thursday afternoon waiting for the final versions of the budget bills.

Legislative leaders finally saw them at 5:15 p.m.

Cortez was furious that he hadn’t had time to brief his Senate colleagues on the $100 million reduction for the department that provides health care spending for the poor. Nonetheless, the Senate passed HB 1, the annual spending bill, and HB 560, the pet projects bill, in quick order.

There was another wrinkle. Cortez and Sen. Bret Allain, a Republican from Franklin who oversees the construction bill for the Senate, were angry that the final version of HB 2 now omitted $7 million initially put in the budget by Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek. Cloud had worked for three years to secure the funding to resurface and add shoulders to two dangerous portions of La. 106 in Evangeline Parish.

‘This is shameful’

Allain didn’t want to approve the final version of HB 2 until the money for Cloud’s highway fixes was restored. But Rep. Magee and two colleagues — Rep. Neil Riser, R-Columbia, and Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette — argued that they had to vote on the bill immediately, because if they did not, the Legislature would have to convene a special session to sign off on it. On the Senate rostrum, Magee and Allain cursed at each other, but Cortez then moved forward with the vote.

Magee raced back across Memorial Hall to the House.

There, members of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus — a group modeled after the far-right Congressional Freedom Caucus in Washington — were trying to run out the clock in protest of the way the budget was handled.

Rep. Raymond Crews, a fiscal conservative from Bossier City, went to the podium to express his opposition to HB1. Tensions mounted as the clock neared 6 p.m.

But Magee had outfoxed them, thanks to quick thinking earlier in the day by Rep. Barry Ivey, a Republican from Central who had suggested invoking a rule imposing a three-minute limit for debate on each bill. The House then established that rule, without the fiscal conservatives realizing the implications until later, when it was too late.

The three-minute rule stopped Crews. Magee went to the podium and, with the help of Rep. Jason Hughes, D-New Orleans, won approval for the House to begin voting on the remaining budget bills. Schexnayder hurried along the process.

Rep. Danny McCormick, a firebrand Republican from the northwest Louisiana town of Oil City, stood in the aisle and raised his hands in indignation, yelling that the speaker was acting unconstitutionally. He shouted: “This is shameful!"  

One by one, the bills passed the House at 5:44 p.m., 5:50 p.m. and 5:54 p.m.

Six minutes later, the Legislature adjourned.

By tradition, a group of senators and representatives rode the elevator to the fourth floor to officially inform Edwards that the Legislature had completed its work.

In the governor’s office, lawmakers found mini-bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky on a table. They and Edwards toasted the end of the session by downing a shot.

Thirty minutes later, Edwards appeared before reporters in an adjoining room.

The governor began on a positive note, reminding everyone that he had inherited a $2 billion deficit from Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2016 and that the state now had $2 billion in savings accounts. He thanked legislators for providing $44 million for early childhood education — which was higher than they had planned.

Want stories like this in your inbox? Sign up for the Inside Louisiana Politics newsletter

Edwards added that he had no forewarning of the $100 million reduction for the Department of Health, calling it “unconscionable.” He also pledged to reject the three LGBTQ+ bills. 

Asked whether he agreed with the assessment that he and Cortez triumphed over the 19 fiscal conservatives, Edwards replied, “I really don’t want to sit up and say the governor’s office and the Senate won, and the House lost. The people of Louisiana won. To the extent that the 19 take it personally, they lost.”

Right after Edwards was done, as it was growing dark outside, Schexnayder and Cortez faced reporters in Memorial Hall who peppered them with questions about the unexpected health department cut.

Cortez blamed it on the lower chamber’s demands for more debt payments. Schexnayder was then asked which services the department would lose without the $100 million.

“I would say none, and if there is something that happens to come up with that, then we’ll take care of it,” Schexnayder said. “I don’t know that anyone told us anything’s going to be impacted.”

Note: This article has been updated to show that the senator uttered profanities was Sen. Bret Allain.